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Cream_Filling posted:Really? I'm curious about this now. David and Leigh Eddings also fit the bill, although it was only his later books that she gets a writing credit for despite having co-written from pretty much the start.
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Oct 11, 2013 13:06
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Helsreach now finished, I find myself a bit interested in reading more of the Salamanders. Is there a particular novel of theirs that stands above and beyond the others? I read earlier the Vulkan Lives was a bit of a mixed bag.
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Oct 11, 2013 14:03
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Deofuta posted:Helsreach now finished, I find myself a bit interested in reading more of the Salamanders. Is there a particular novel of theirs that stands above and beyond the others? I read earlier the Vulkan Lives was a bit of a mixed bag. No because they are Nick Kyme's pet Legion and he is a bad author.
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Oct 11, 2013 14:11
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Cream_Filling posted:Yeah, it was a dumb choice, but maybe the point is that it's always been vaguely implied that the Emperor has either been, or was the a controlling influence behind, Jesus and a bunch of other moral and religious figures over the years. So maybe the angry, warlike Emperor is the result of him getting frustrated over the centuries as the Cabal goes around killing off all the human moral paragons he sets up to try and unite humanity and help it grow. This also explains the emperor's hatred of aliens. Because the Cabal is convinced that humanity is destroying the universe and that their development must be stopped, and the Emperor has been playing 5-d chess against them this whole time and is getting sick of losing good people to them. I like this idea because it provides a sympathetic explanation for the Emperor circa the Great Crusade, as opposed to the idea that the best humanity had to offer was an authoritarian bellend who was a terrible father and favored an ignorance- and xenophobia-based approach to dealing with moral perils. You know how people talk about how much Jesus's message has been distorted over the past 2000 years? Imagine there's been an extra 28,000 years of that. Also you literally were Jesus and you've experienced those 30 bitter millennia of the universe making GBS threads on that and any subsequent attempts to get people to be excellent to each other. Given all that, a heel turn starts to seem pretty enticing. I don't think I'll ever adore the Emperor but if some of the better writers play their cards right they could make him seem a lot more like a Lear-esque tragic figure instead of just a dickhead.
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Oct 11, 2013 14:52
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Yeah, the Emperor we see from the point of view of the primarchs and space marines seems to be a very different impression than the one Oll Persson has of him. In Know No Fear, he recalls saying to the Emperor a very long time ago that all he wants is a normal life, and the Emperor just laughs and assures him that he will have as many of those as he wants. That seems to be a very different person than the fellow who led a great conquering crusade where the ultimate goal was to unite humanity under his will. Hell, if the Cabal has pissed him off so badly, maybe the Golden Throne project was a way to say 'gently caress you assholes' by breaking into their warpless special hyperspace zone of the Webway.
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Oct 11, 2013 15:09
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VanSandman posted:No because they are Nick Kyme's pet Legion and he is a bad author. drat, that's too bad. Is that sort of thing (having control over a portion of fluff) dictated by BL? I could understand that sort of control being done with groups like Gaunt's Ghosts, but an entire founding chapter seems tougher to swallow.
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Oct 11, 2013 15:21
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ed balls balls man posted:There's quite a bit in Atlas Infernal by Rob Sanders. He's not a terrible author either going by Legion of the Damned or AI. I love Rob Sanders. He's not afraid to get weird.
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Oct 11, 2013 15:26
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I'm not particularly religious but are people really saying that it would be a good idea to produce a body of work that says the Emperor is God and Jesus is a spacetraveling magicman?
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Oct 11, 2013 15:44
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^^ 40k isn't weird enough for some of us. Also it's hardly a new idea, he was Jesus once in the fluff for ages.Deofuta posted:drat, that's too bad. Is that sort of thing (having control over a portion of fluff) dictated by BL? I could understand that sort of control being done with groups like Gaunt's Ghosts, but an entire founding chapter seems tougher to swallow. It's probably more a sort of gentlemen's agreement than anything else. Plus when somebody's written a bunch of stories about the Salamanders you either have to read them all to know what the gently caress is going on in their continuity or make new poo poo up and piss your colleague off.
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Oct 11, 2013 15:47
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VanSandman posted:^^ 40k isn't weird enough for some of us. Also it's hardly a new idea, he was Jesus once in the fluff for ages.
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Oct 11, 2013 16:21
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I think there was some vague stuff about this, alongside the old origin story about the shamans merging after a ritual suicide.
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Oct 11, 2013 16:35
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berzerkmonkey posted:Whaaa? No way. Up until recently, there was very little fluff about the Emperor, most of it being the battle on Horus' battlebarge and the Sensei stuff in the RoC books.
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Oct 11, 2013 17:15
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VanSandman posted:Yeah, the Emperor we see from the point of view of the primarchs and space marines seems to be a very different impression than the one Oll Persson has of him. In Know No Fear, he recalls saying to the Emperor a very long time ago that all he wants is a normal life, and the Emperor just laughs and assures him that he will have as many of those as he wants. That seems to be a very different person than the fellow who led a great conquering crusade where the ultimate goal was to unite humanity under his will. Hell, if the Cabal has pissed him off so badly, maybe the Golden Throne project was a way to say 'gently caress you assholes' by breaking into their warpless special hyperspace zone of the Webway. IIRC in the Mark of Calth short Oll also recalls seeing something hidden in his face, something along the lines of his mask slipping for a fraction of a second and underneath was something dark enough to unnerve a Perpetual. So even way back, he wasn't completely (at all) benevolent. I recently finished ADB's Grey Knights book which does a wonderful job of putting the universe in perspective as far as how much it sucks to be human. See an Astartes in unmarked grey armor? Death sentence. Witness forces of the Ruinous Powers? Death sentence. It really drives home the point that the Imperium is just as twisted and evil as Tyranids and Chaos, respectively, it just exhibits those traits in a different way. Also Hyperion comes across as a complete pussy, though I'm assuming that's intentional.
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Oct 11, 2013 17:41
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Vorenus posted:It really drives home the point that the Imperium is just as twisted and evil as Tyranids and Chaos, respectively, it just exhibits those traits in a different way. It depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, 'only' purging someone vs. torturing their soul forever in the warp isn't "just as" twisted and evil. But looked at from another way, the evil daemons are just following their unalterable nature, whereas humans have had countless opportunities to not be dickheads over literal scores of thousands of years and keep loving it up every time. A while back in the thread someone observed that the Heresy is basically the result of the Emperor having choices at various junctures and always taking the most retarded possible one (comedy options aside), and I commented that this was basically 40K.txt. Now realize that this is supposed to be the very superlative best humanity has ever had to offer.
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Oct 11, 2013 17:55
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Maybe being a short-sighted fuckup is humanity.txt?
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Oct 11, 2013 18:11
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By it's very definition chaos and capital C Chaos is is unknowable. That seems to be the Emperors Achilles heel. A man that knows everything but the unknowable -- the unknowable as an entity; that's a hell of a hard counter and nemesis.
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Oct 11, 2013 20:59
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Blacktoll posted:By it's very definition chaos and capital C Chaos is is unknowable. That seems to be the Emperors Achilles heel. A man that knows everything but the unknowable -- the unknowable as an entity; that's a hell of a hard counter and nemesis. JerryLee posted:It depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, 'only' purging someone vs. torturing their soul forever in the warp isn't "just as" twisted and evil. 1) Not teaching the Mechanicum to embrace science from the beginning.
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Oct 11, 2013 21:55
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They do embrace science. They just also believe in a machine god. Plus you're confusing engineers with scientists.
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Oct 11, 2013 21:58
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Kurzon posted:That's my take. Not even the Emperor fully understands Chaos and can anticipate its every act. Chaos is something that corrupt you simply by the presence of Warp energies; your psychology can make you more or less vulnerable but nobody is immune (apart from blanks) because it's a supernatural force. They do embrace science - they just don't embrace advancement. So much was lost and corrupted during the Age of Strife, they can't risk losing it again, or allowing something like a fully functioning AI to wreak havoc among humanity. They do it for the right reasons, but they are extremely gun-shy.
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Oct 11, 2013 22:01
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Think of it this way, the Machinarium deifies their technology and produces the war machines of the imperium as a form of worship for their God. It's one thing to reconcile recovering lost knowledge with that theology but to actively pursue R&D is basically to admit that the Machine God is imperfect which is something that's hard to push through. I'm sure the Emperor planned to subvert the cult eventually, but when you're in the middle of conquering a galaxy and have a machine cult putting dozens of forge worlds to work supplying you with the war machines necessary to conquer a million worlds, that's something you don't poke at.
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Oct 11, 2013 22:41
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What books deal with the whole Cabal shebang? I've only seen them appear tangentially in Betrayer when one of them tries to recruit Cyrene . Also, finally getting started on the Ravenor books.
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Oct 12, 2013 00:31
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Sephyr posted:What books deal with the whole Cabal shebang? I've only seen them appear tangentially in Betrayer when one of them tries to recruit Cyrene . Legion is the first and main one.
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Oct 12, 2013 00:33
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I'm recovering from head surgery so I'm reading A Thousand Sons and this book is loving blowing my mind right now. Ahzek Ahriman, so good. Magnus is such an amazingly written primarch. His retort at the Council of Nikaea is incredible and it would be a waste if Games Workshop never tried to adapt or depict the entire trial in some kind of cinematic media. AndyElusive fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 02:15
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Regarding a thousand sons, which i just finished last night. Is there any closure for the remembrancers? The last thing i recall is them getting on the ship, only at the absolute last possible moment to run into Russ's fleet. There was an explosion, the ship shook, but they seemed fine overall, and confused. Then it just cuts to prospero with no more mention of them. AndyElusive posted:I'm recovering from head surgery so I'm reading A Thousand Sons and this book is loving blowing my mind right now. Wait till you read prospero burns, which is better in every single way. The entire first portion of that book felt so alien and grimdark. UberJumper fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 02:22
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UberJumper posted:Wait till you read prospero burns, which is better in every single way. The entire first portion of that book felt so alien and grimdark. I have it here, primed and ready to pick up as soon as I finish!
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Oct 12, 2013 06:47
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AndyElusive posted:I have it here, primed and ready to wet leopard growl as soon as I finish!
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Oct 12, 2013 07:39
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Deofuta posted:Helsreach now finished, I find myself a bit interested in reading more of the Salamanders. Is there a particular novel of theirs that stands above and beyond the others? I read earlier the Vulkan Lives was a bit of a mixed bag. I was in the same situation as you and loved the Salamanders in Helsreach and decided to read Nick Kyme. You'd think it'd be pretty hard to gently caress up writing about a chill chapter like the Salamanders but nope, the Salamander books read pretty much like lovely 40k fanfiction. There's literally a character who rises from whipping boy because of From what goons have said here about Vulkan Lives, I don't think we're going to get any good Salamnders material for a long time though there are some good tidbits about Salamander stuff from the Imperial Armour: Badab War books. berzerkmonkey posted:They do embrace science - they just don't embrace advancement. So much was lost and corrupted during the Age of Strife, they can't risk losing it again, or allowing something like a fully functioning AI to wreak havoc among humanity. They do it for the right reasons, but they are extremely gun-shy. In Mechanicum and some of the other HH books. It's implied that there is already a growing schism in the Mechanicum before the Heresy begins between people who believe the Emperor is the Omnissiah to people who think it is just an elaborate plan by the Emperor to enslave them. Most of the leaders of enlightenment and the advancement of knowledge turn traitor and in the end, the main pro-enlightenment leader ends up burning her followers, her city and all their works to stop the traitors from getting their hands on some really cool poo poo. This then leaves the religious fanatics, who are dedicated to meeting the various quorums and preserving knowledge for themselves, to rebuild the new Mechanicum.
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Oct 12, 2013 12:54
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It seems fairly clear that the traitor mechanicum have been going bad for some time - after all, they managed to build not one, but 3 Furious Abyss-class vessels, that's no mean feat.
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Oct 12, 2013 14:13
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Kegslayer posted:Nick Kyme. This is very good advice. I was so disappointed, he really ruined the Salamanders for me.
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Oct 12, 2013 15:05
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thespaceinvader posted:It seems fairly clear that the traitor mechanicum have been going bad for some time - after all, they managed to build not one, but 3 Furious Abyss-class vessels, that's no mean feat. No they didn't. That didn't happen.
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Oct 12, 2013 15:32
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Eh? Yeah they did. Lorgar brought out the Blessed Lady and the Trisagon and smeared a bunch of Ultramarines all over the place in Betrayer.
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Oct 12, 2013 16:35
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He's implying Battle for the Abyss didn't happen.
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Oct 12, 2013 16:45
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berzerkmonkey posted:He's implying Battle for the Abyss didn't happen. And he's implying it's worth it so that Mark of Calth did happen.
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Oct 12, 2013 17:26
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The Blessed Lady class really is a marvel. Pity there are only two of them.
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Oct 12, 2013 17:28
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Fellblade posted:And he's implying it's worth it so that Mark of Calth did happen. But we all loved Betrayer, right? Right!? 
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Oct 12, 2013 18:02
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Demiurge4 posted:But we all loved Betrayer, right? Right!? Well yeah we're not stupid.
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Oct 12, 2013 18:18
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I think the best part of the whole thing is how Battle for the Abyss is basically called a stupid piece of poo poo by Lorgar. Not sure about the exact quote but I think he describes everyone involved with the furious abyss as idiots or something.
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Oct 12, 2013 21:43
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hopterque posted:I think the best part of the whole thing is how Battle for the Abyss is basically called a stupid piece of poo poo by Lorgar. Likewise, in Unremembered Empire, there's a frantic exchange in the Residency: "Tell me what you meant about Vulkan." "Vulkan lives, Dark Angel." "Vulkan lives!?" Holguin echoed. "Who cares if Vulkan lives!?" Euten exclaimed, rising to look at them, her hands and sleeves bloodied. And then Abnett goes on to write Vulkan in such a state of absolute horror and madness that he speaks no actual words throughout the entire book; and he still manages to make Vulkan more understandable and interesting than Kyme did. :| Also, on the theory that one of the Emperor's greatest flaws is how separated from humanity he is and thinks, there's a specific passage somewhere where someone gets a psychic visitation from the guy, and when he 'laughs' in reaction to a comment, it's noted that it's more of an emulation of laughter, from someone who'd long forgotten what the original thing was supposed to be about. And I also am a subscriber to the theory that the Big E potentially wasn't (quite) as anti-xeno before the Eldar literally hosed up the warp, and in the process, his species' future, and countless alien 'allies' descended upon humanity to eat, enslave, etc. the now scattered and vulnerable race. I also suspect that his ancient origins has a lot to do with his blunt, power-obsessed mindset; he was born back in the days where war and domination were simply the way to get things done. He was noted by the eldar as being a "Warrior-King," and it's often noted that he has "the impression of a man made powerful through war." As advanced as he became in time, and despite the things he learned alongside humanity, war's still his biggest defining aspect. For example, you know how your great grandpa might change his opinions and learn new things as the years go by; but regardless, he was born in the Great Depression and his early defining experiences and perspectives are going to color the rest of his views and opinions. He may be a brilliant scientist, statesman, and various other things, but his original and most defining purpose was to be a big, powerful psychic warrior man in the near-caveman days who could keep the scary poo poo in the warp away and keep early humanity safe.
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Oct 12, 2013 23:07
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I just finished reading The Death of Integrity by Guy Haley, which takes place during M38 where two chapters, the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers, team up to cleanse a space hulk of Genestealers, but then get a visit from a couple of Magos of the Mechanicum on their own battle ship that has orders from a High Lord of Terra to retrieve STC data from the center of the hulk. It was fun, mostly bolter porn and Space Marines being Space Marines, but it wasn't boring. The neatest part of it was that near the end, when the reach the center, the STC prize is in the computers of a ship that predates the Imperium, from the height of the Dark Age of Technology. It was pretty cool, I thought, the contrasts of designs, where everything was sleeker, and there was no ornamentation at all, unlike the battle barges and whatnot of the Imperium. What's even neater was that the ship just happens to have a fully functional AI that is the sanest character in the book, despite being called insane by said Space Marines and Magoses. When the Magos in charge attempts to control the ship, the AI kindly responds: quote:Who are you to tell such as I what to do and what not to do? Once I gladly called your kind “master”, but look how far you have fallen! Your ancestors bestrode the universe, and what are you? A witch doctor, mumbling cantrips and casting scented oils at mighty works you have no conception of. You are an ignoramus, a nothing. You are no longer worthy of the name “man”. You look at the science and artistry of your forebears, and you fear it as primitives fear the night. I was there when mankind stood upon the brink of transcendence! I returned to find it sunk into senility. You disgust me. I thought that was awesome.
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Oct 13, 2013 03:53
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Impaired Casing posted:I just finished reading The Death of Integrity by Guy Haley, which takes place during M38 where two chapters, the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers, team up to cleanse a space hulk of Genestealers, but then get a visit from a couple of Magos of the Mechanicum on their own battle ship that has orders from a High Lord of Terra to retrieve STC data from the center of the hulk. That makes me really want to read Baneblade. The whole 'time displacement in the warp' gets brought up periodically in the fluff for humorous reason but a single Dark Age of Technology ship that emerged from the Warp would be horrified and disgusted at humanity but even with their hyper advanced tech still be powerless to do anything. The most positive end result is they flee to some out of the way Imperial world or Exodite world (Dark Age humanity was trading partners with Elder if I recall correctly) and avoid attention.
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Oct 13, 2013 09:15
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